Subtitle: The circuses without bread syndrome
Interestingly in a Machiavellian way this issue pops up on the cusp of the 'Holiday Season' and apparently orchestrated at the behest of 'management'. It is also of some interest that management has serially advocated against arm's length community engagement and there has been none.
Likewise, with Infrastructure Tasmania apparently about to brief Councillors but with no apparent opportunity for ratepayers to have a like opportunity. What might Infrastructure Tasmania have to say to Councillors that it cannot say the the people who over decades have invested in this place, financially, socially and culturally?
Ponder this! ... That the phrase 'bread and circuses', the one that refers to superficial appeasement, that it should pop in the 'Stadium Debacle', is no real surprise. It has a certain poignance to it. It is attributed to a 'poet,' and it is used commonly in cultural, and in particularly political, contexts. That it might resonate so loudly in Tasmania, in the current 'debate' – suppressed deliberations – should not surprise critical thinkers.
However, where are these 'thinkers'!?
In a political context, 'bread and circuses' is a metaphor used to explain the generation of public approval. That is not by initiating amenable public policy, but by diversion, distraction, and by satisfying what is assumed to be the most immediate or base cum lowest common denominator requirements of the populous – the taxpayers, the ratepayers et al. In its Roman context there was a palliative food element and the diversionary entertainment element.
The poetics were there to decry the "selfishness" of common people and the neglect of wider issues. Then, and now still, it calls out the erosion of, and the ignorance of, civic duty, representational obligation, being any kind of priority in governance.
So in this distorted and dystopian initiative 'to build a stadium and colonise York Park', it turns out that 'footie tragics' get a big tick. However, housing initiatives, hospital inadequacies, cost of living issues ect. find a place in some 'back of mind' political unreality of the status quoists.
For example, the calling out of 'the homeless' – those 'have nots' placed in circumstances of housing stress – as 'leaners' cum 'dole bludgers' , as 'dysfunctional people' , as 'socially inept', with 'the haves', the self assessed 'somebodies' in power touting their stuff, well this is nothing short of alarming.
History tells us that for the aristocratic class, these entitled authorities, these 'born to rulers', the 'bread and circuses' syndrome remained an object of political contention until it the autocratic empire builders somehow cease absolute power. And it has been, and is repeated over and over. Right now these entitled, seem to imagine that the 'circuses' alone will do and the 'bread bit', well it can be economically rationalised.
Some of us had competent history teachers yet there is no better teacher than history itself in helping us to determine and contemplate the future. It is said that there are answers worth billions of dollars in within the pages of books you can buy for a few dollars. Reading them is the game changing tick!
So, if it turns out that a cohort of critical thinkers enter from backstage with a mind to call out dystopia. The status quoists worry about what they'll lose, but dystopia is a very interesting setting. Whether it's the book '1984' or 'Fahrenheit 451'... dystopia is a wonderfully cinematic setting.
It hardly matters how and why libraries and their books are destroyed. It turns out that every banning, every curtailment, every shredding, every plundering the looters always leave a ghostly presence in their wake. Phoenix like, a louder, a clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded and the curtailed fills the gap.
While a vacuous press serves tyranny well enough, all the time underground networks prevail and in the end dystopia is called out and undermined. Occasionally dystopian tyrants and their sycophants suffer ignominy and sometimes, more justice is delivered in a weekend than ten years of courts and tribunals might ever deliver – and the world might well look away.
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